This invention relates to emergency evacuation equipment for aircraft, and in particular, to inflatable aircraft evacuation slides.
The requirement for reliably evacuating airline passengers in the event of an emergency is well known. A conventional method of quickly evacuating a large number of passengers from an aircraft is to provide multiple emergency exits each of which is equipped with an inflatable emergency evacuation slide. Since not all emergencies occur during daylight or in well-lit areas, emergency evacuation slides are often equipped with lighting systems to illuminate at least a portion of the evacuation slide when it is deployed. U.S. Pat. No. 3,621,383 to Rush discloses a ribbon-like lighting harness with a plurality of incandescent lights which is attached directly to the top surface of the main side support members of the evacuation slide. U.S. Pat. No. 3,463,915 to Day discloses a chemical light indicator in which a chemiluminescent fluid is delivered to translucent tubes that are attached to the upper surface of the main side support members. A disadvantage to the aforementioned lighting systems is that the illumination sources, being attached directly to the main side support members, direct their light upward casting the slide surface in a shadow and therefore do not provide adequate light on the slide surface itself. Accordingly, what is needed is an aircraft evacuation slide having illumination sources that are elevated above the slide surface to provide a relatively shadow-free illumination of the slide surface itself.